GalaxyExplorer: a 3D visualization tool

Author: Szalay, TamasDate: Jan 2002

This tool enables an interactive, video game-like
fly through of the 3D galaxy distribution in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
This tool runs under Windows, requires DirectX8.0 or higher,
and a graphics card supporting 3D.

The SDSS SkyServer – Public Access to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Data

The SkyServer provides Internet access to the public
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data for both astronomers
and for science education. This paper describes the SkyServer
goals and architecture. It also describes our experience
operating the SkyServer on the Internet. The SDSS data is
public and well-documented so it makes a good test platform
for research on database algorithms and performance.
This appeared as a Microsoft Technical Report, MS-TR-2001-104.

The archive will enable astronomers to explore the data interactively. Data
access will be aided by multidimensional spatial and attribute indices. The data
will be partitioned in many ways. Small tag objects consisting of the most
popular attributes will accelerate frequent searches. Splitting the data among
multiple servers will allow parallel, scalable I/O and parallel data analysis.
Hashing techniques will allow efficient clustering, and pair-wise comparison
algorithms that should parallelize nicely. Randomly sampled subsets will allow
debugging otherwise large queries at the desktop. Central servers will operate
a data pump to support sweep searches touching most of the data. The anticipated
queries will require special operators related to angular distances and
complex similarity tests of object properties, like shapes, colors, velocity
vectors, or temporal behaviors. These issues pose interesting data management
challenges.

The paper describes our vision for the SkyServer, dated about a year before
we started to build the production system. This appeared as a Microsoft
Technical Report, MS-TR-99-30.